


Triangles and Boxes

by yourlibrarian



Category: Castle, Good Guys (TV 2010), Once a Thief (TV), White Collar
Genre: Episode Related, Episode: s03e08 As You Were, Gen, Meta
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-04-28
Updated: 2016-04-28
Packaged: 2018-06-05 03:40:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,694
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6687745
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yourlibrarian/pseuds/yourlibrarian
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A look at subtext in White Collar (no, not that kind) and women in boxes.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Triangles and Boxes

**Author's Note:**

> Originally published on July 29, 2010 and July 31, 2011.

#### Triangles

In "As You Were", Sara's comment about how Neal was unrealistic, a romantic dreamer, was not exactly a surprise, but I did notice how reinforced this interpretation was during this episode. It's not exactly a revelation to say about a character used to conning and stealing his way through life that he doesn't live a grounded life, especially in comparison to company-man and committed husband, Peter. Nor was it surprising that Neal's reason for this is more wistful than rebellious. If his criminality were coming from a place of anger that would make for a different character and show.

However, I felt that this reinforced reading of Neil's motivations, and indeed his relationship with Peter, was spelled out as a way of undercutting what is actually a very dark sort of connection. Peter has always had an official license to stalk Neal, though the way he seemed to investigate Neal's love life a few episodes back just seemed creepy. But in this episode it couldn't be clearer how Neal also stalks Peter, albeit in a less committed, consistent way. And just as Peter was creeping around Neal's bedroom, here we have Neal creeping around Peter and El's. 

There was no reason that the safe had to be in their bedroom, it might even have been better obscured in some other room of the house. And this is the first time Peter and El's bedroom is shown in the series. So the scene was not only an echo of Peter's, but also had a particularly sexually invasive overtone. 

The funny thing about it is that it's one of the best examples of subtext I can think of, only it's not just a slashy subtext because man, it is pretty texty on this show. Instead the scene was like a subtext of an entirely different show that keeps peeking through -- one that is darker and more revealing about the underside of people's motivations. The fact that the discomfort in the scene relates to invasion of privacy seems well suited to our time, when people reveal themselves so freely online both in physical and emotional ways. In some ways, this has made seeing what people keep to themselves more tantalizing. And in the show the fact that Peter used his job to stalk El in the series pilot suggests that the whole issue of overstepping bounds runs in a lot of directions. 

The show seems full of intimate triangles. The one that stood out to me in this episode was in how Diana and El function as professional and personal confidantes respectively. I feel pretty certain that the reason Diana's character was created as a lesbian was to forestall any sort of inappropriate relationship overtones with Peter. He and Diana share a close bond of trust matched only by the one Peter has with his wife. I'm quite happy about this since I feel it gives Diana a bigger chance to be her own character rather than some sort of dangling love interest. 

I also find it notable that Diana by default distrusts Neal whereas El has more than once sided with Neal against Peter. The two seem to embody the split in Peter's own attitude, one of professional duty yet personal weakness when it comes to Neal, who in many ways resembles El, whereas Diana is, if anything, an even more committed professional than Peter.

#### Boxes

Another show I've been watching is The Good Guys. I've been enjoying it. It's a cop show, but it has a quirky take, and the two leads work well together. It's even lighter than Leverage or White Collar, which I don't mind at all. But after several episodes I am less than thrilled about the token female characters in it. 

Unfortunately one character seems to be there primarily to give one of the guys something to pine for, and to show her boobs. The other one, their boss, gets to be put out with them and occasionally supportive. Maybe as the show goes on this will change, but I really doubt it.

One of the reasons I doubt it is because these women are very compartmentalized. This is something I've been noticing about shows that do a better job with their female characters. For example, I think White Collar comes up with interesting female characters. The problem is that they don't get to do enough. This season we're hardly getting any Elizabeth, though happily, we're getting more Diana. June, however, is a character who might as well have appeared in the season premiere with subtitles explaining who she was for all we've seen her before or since. This seems like an utter waste to me as she was set up as an intriguing character in the pilot and could surely do more on the show. 

Case in point – the season 2 premiere. Why not cut out the bonding between Peter and Moz and give that screen time instead to Elizabeth and June? Let Peter confide his concerns to her (they can do it by phone) or have Peter talk to June. Or have Neal talk to June. I like Moz fine as a character, but what I don't like is that he is getting more and more to do, and the women are disappearing from the show. 

And this is a show where they will have a hard time getting any substantial parts unless they are dealing with Peter and Neal. The way things are set up, there is little reason or expectation that June, Elizabeth, and Diana will spend much, if any, time together. This is what I mean by women being compartmentalized –- they're off in their own boxes that don't mix. So Elizabeth is home with Peter, June is home with Neal (literally, though we hardly ever see it), and Diana works with both in the office. Diana goes home to meet with Peter both because Elizabeth is away and also because the plot required it. But I will be quite pleasantly surprised if in this or the next season we have any scenes where the women interact. Note that in last week's episode, not once do Alex and Diana interact.

I recently watched the 90s Canadian series, Once a Thief. I can't say I was very impressed with the show. However, I was incredibly struck by its focus on women. There is one female lead character, one regular female character, and one recurring female character, as well as prominent female guest stars through its 22 episodes. This is in comparison to 2 lead male characters, four recurring male characters, and weekly one-shot male characters. As with most one-shot characters in this sort of spy/fantasy series, the guests tend to be villains, love interests or both. So the female characters are occasionally killed, and usually go away, but not always and not any more than the men.

For example, in one case a somewhat unbalanced female character is allowed to be quirky, difficult and wild, and is recruited and sent off to work for the group's secret agency. In another case, a very trivialized female villain ends up being recruited to work as an agent and becomes the recurring character. The female boss, the regular character, is not in any way your typical boss. She is highly sexualized but independent, dark and competent, and gets a fair amount of development, including her own episode at one point. Most striking of all, it is her decision to rehabilitate, or give second chances to these other female characters, and towards the end of the series she is clearly mentoring the female lead. 

Interestingly, although the show had this great love triangle set up in the pilot among the three leads, within only a few episodes the writers dropped the idea and had the female lead end her engagement to one of the men. Never in the first season does she suggest any kind of romantic future with the other one. Personally, I was sorry about this because I thought it had been a great premise. However, it made me wonder if the reason there was so much more going on with the women on the show was because _none_ of them were there as romantic interests?

I don't think that this is necessary for a female character to get development time, or her own role in the show independent of another character. It is mostly that I think female characters tend to be far more compartmentalized on most shows than male characters –- boxed away from one another, not allowed to be on screen together as distinctly different people, and not often allowed the sort of character flaws and downright unpleasantness that male characters are. 

I'll look at one last series as an example: Castle. On the face of it, this show had a good set-up with a male and female lead, two female and two male regulars, and a female and male recurring characters. Castle, as the title character, is the only one that interacts with all the others, but there have been some instances of Beckett speaking with his mother and daughter even though they are largely kept in different circles from one another.

As the episodes have gone on, however, there has been less woman-to-woman conversation and interaction, and more mediated interaction with another man (generally Castle) in the scene. For example, most of the time now when Parish speaks to Beckett about her findings, Castle is there. In the beginning, she and Beckett would discuss the case alone (and then talk about Castle). Most of the time now when Martha and Alexis speak, it's in a scene with Castle. We also continue to see next to nothing of Beckett's off-work hours.

Clearly, even when female characters exist and when they are interesting people, the biggest problem in giving them screen time occurs when those characters are not stretched. One way to do so is to allow them to interact with the regulars in meaningful ways, and another is to allow them to interact with one another. Maybe it would help if women were also allowed to do this in the writers' rooms of these shows.


End file.
